System to increase server&#39;s density in datacenter

ABSTRACT

A system and a method for forming the system. The system includes a cooling conduit and rack containers stacked in a first direction parallel to a floor. Each rack unit includes at least one heat generating device configured to generate heat while in operation. Each rack container is equipped with wheels positioned on a supporting structure to enable the wheels to move along the supporting structure in a second direction which enables adjacent rack containers to move closer to or further from each other. The second direction is parallel to the floor and perpendicular to the first direction. The supporting structure is on the floor and oriented in the second direction. The cooling conduit is secured on a top surface of each rack container to allow a cooling fluid to flow into each rack container and be heated by absorbing heat from the at least one heat generating device.

TECHNICAL FIELD

The present invention relates generally to datacenter and moreparticularly to a system to increase server's density in datacenter.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

A datacenter is a facility used to house computer systems and associatedcomponents, such as telecommunications and storage systems. It generallyincludes redundant or backup power supplies, redundant datacommunications connections, environmental controls (air conditioning,fire suppression, etc.), and special security devices. Datacentersconcentrate large numbers of processing systems within a small area inorder to provide an efficient and optimal environment to operate thesystems. Power, cooling and other management services can be providedmore efficiently in a datacenter than if the systems were decentralized.

Continuing demands for increasing processing system capacity requirethat the datacenter must be designed for efficient power management,thermal management, configurational flexibility, and maintenance. Thesecompeting design considerations have led to the development of numeroussystems, but the most common of these systems include the use of racksthat support large numbers of components and are arranged side by sidein rows.

In a typical datacenter as illustrated on FIG. 1, adjacent rack rows areplaced face to face or back to back in order to create alternate hotaisles and cold aisles. Cold air pushed in the raised floor by thecooling system is supplied in the cold aisles in between of to adjacentrack rows facing each other through perforated floor tiles. Cold air iscollected by the cooling fans of equipment in the racks and is expulsedat the back of the rack row in the hot aisles where two adjacent rackrows are back to back. Hot air is collected in the ceiling andcirculates back to the cooling system. Alternating hot and cold aislesenable relatively efficient air flow management and cooling, whileproviding access aisles along the front and back of each row of racks tofacilitate installation, reconfiguration and maintenance.

The aisles between the racks have a second function which is to allowpersonal circulation between the racks to gain access to the equipmentsfor installation and maintenance operations.

Buildings are expensive, and machine room space is costly for companies.There is always the concern to reduce this cost by increasing as much aspossible the number of machines contained in a given room (the“equipment density” of the room) to gain cost efficiency.

With the common room design as described above, one can noticed thatalthough efficient, there is still a lot of space that is not used forhost equipment. Overall it is around 30% and up to 50% of the floorspace that is not used and cannot be used, as all the aisles, either hotor cold are and must remain free.

However, there remains the need for even more efficient rack systemsthat make more efficient use of the space in a given datacenter whilestill providing thermal management and configurational flexibility.

It would be desirable to have more efficient rack systems that utilizemany standardized components, such as motherboards, hard disk drives,and PCI cards.

It would be even more desirable to have rack systems that increase thedensity of the processing system without overloading existing coolingsystems.

The present invention offers such solution.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The shortcomings of the prior art are overcome and additional advantagesare provided through the provision of the system of the presentinvention. The system is made of a mobile closed container thatcomprises flexible tubes for power distribution, network connection andair circulation within the container.

Accordingly, a first object of the invention is to provide a moveablecontainer including one or more racks locations to house a pluralityservers. The container is closed to have an inside air circulation tocool the equipments of the racks.

The moveable container is further equipped with wheels to allow easymoving of the container.

The moveable container is also supplied in network connection, powerdistribution, and air circulation with a flexible arrangement.

It is another object of the invention to provide a datacenter structurehaving an increased density of servers in the machine room.

Yet another object of the invention is to provide a datacenter whereinall rack containers are placed aside each other without the need to keepfree aisles between the racks rows.

The present invention provides a system that offers an easyaccessibility to racks for maintenance purpose in a dense machine room.The mobility of the system of the invention allows removing freecorridors previously required for maintenance and security access.

A major advantage of the system of the present invention is to allow abetter optimization of the space used in a datacenter.

Accordingly, there is provided a system as further described in theappended independent claim.

In a preferred embodiment, a container for housing one or more heatgenerating components comprises supplying means secured at an inner portof the container for supplying at least a cooling material inside thecontainer to cool the heat generating components, and exhausting meanshaving one end secured at an outer port for exhausting hot materialresulting from the cooling material passing through the container. Thecontainer is further equipped with moving means secured to the containerto allow displacement of the container. The supplying and exhaustingmeans comprise flexible extensible portions adapted to flexibly extendwhen moving the container.

Further embodiments are described in the appended dependent claims.

Further aspects of the invention will now be described, by way ofpreferred implementation and examples, with reference to theaccompanying figures.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The above and other items, features and advantages of the invention willbe better understood by reading the following more particulardescription of the invention in conjunction with the accompanyingdrawings wherein:

FIG. 1 is a schematic perspective view of a prior art datacenter;

FIG. 2 is a schematic front view of a rack container in a preferredembodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 3 is a schematic top view of a rack container in a preferredembodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 4 is a schematic front view of the air supplying conduit in apreferred embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 5 is a schematic top view of the air supplying conduit in apreferred embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 6 is a schematic perspective view of a datacenter in accordancewith a preferred embodiment of the racks containers of the presentinvention;

FIG. 7 is a schematic perspective view of a datacenter in accordancewith a preferred embodiment of the racks containers of the presentinvention in a maintenance mode.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

Embodiments of the invention are described herein after by way ofexamples with reference to the accompanying figures and drawings.

As used herein, the terms “electronics rack”, “rack-mounted electronicequipment”, and “rack unit” are used interchangeably, and unlessotherwise specified include any housing, frame, rack, compartment, bladeserver system, etc., having one or more heat generating components of acomputer system or electronics system, and may be, for example, a standalone computer processor having high, mid or low end processingcapability. In one embodiment, an electronics rack may comprise multipleelectronics subsystems, each having one or more heat generatingcomponents disposed therein requiring cooling. “Electronics subsystem”refers to any sub-housing, blade, book, drawer, node, compartment, etc.,having one or more heat generating electronic components disposedtherein. Each electronics subsystem of an electronics rack may bemovable or fixed relative to the electronics rack, with the electronicsdrawers of a multi-drawer rack unit and blades of a blade center systembeing two examples of subsystems of an electronics rack to be cooled.

Reference is made below to the drawings, which are not drawn to scalefor reasons of understanding, wherein the same reference numbers usedthroughout different figures designate the same or similar components.

FIG. 1 depicts one embodiment of datacenter room layout 100 typical ofthe prior art. In this layout, multiple electronics racks 110 aredisposed in one or more rows. A computer installation such as depictedin FIG. 1 may house several hundred, or even several thousand,microprocessors. One or more cooling units (112) push chilled air (114)into a raised floor. Air (116) goes out of the raised floor throughperforated tiles (118) located at the front of the rack rows. Chilledair is pulled into the racks by equipment ventilation and goes out ashot air (120) at the back of the rack rows and then is collected in theceiling. The machine room is organized with cold aisles (122) and hotaisles (124) to avoid the mixing of hot and cold air flows which wouldreduce the cooling efficiency. The hot air (126) is ultimately pumped bythe cooling units (112) and cooled again for a new cycle.

With reference to FIG. 2, there is depicted a front view of a rackcontainer (200) as used in a preferred embodiment of the presentinvention. The rack container (200) allows housing a plurality of rackunits (202). Several types of heat generating devices (204) (e.g.servers, routers . . . ) may be placed in each rack unit (202). The rackcontainer (200) is further equipped with wheels (206). The wheels areadapted to roll on a supporting structure (208) such as rails in thefloor.

An air supplying conduit (210) is secured at an inner port on top of therack container allowing cold air (212) to enter the rack container (200)and pass through to cool the internal components. The air supplyingconduit is preferably a flexible extensible tube as it will be detailedlater with reference to FIGS. 4 and 5.

Power supply and network connections are provided on a flexible powerand network cable (214) which enters the rack container at an innerpower and inner network ports. In the preferred embodiment, the innerpower and network ports are located on the upper side of the rackcontainer, but any alternative that would not prevent displacement ofthe rack container may be devised.

An exhaust air conduit (216) is secured at an outer port on top of therack container allowing hot air (218) to exhaust from the rack container(200). The exhaust air conduit is preferably a flexible extended tube asit will be detailed later with reference to FIGS. 4 and 5.

For clarity reasons only one instance of the air supplying conduit(210), the flexible cable (214) and the air exhausting conduit (216)have been represented on FIG. 2, but the person skilled in the art wouldeasily understand that as alternative embodiments, the present inventionmay comprise several of each such conduits or cable.

The racks container is a closed system to allow the cold and hot airflows inside the container. Referenced by numerals on FIG. 2 but notdetailed are sliding doors (220) to open the container to allow accessto the equipments located inside the container. Form and size of thedoors are not part of the invention which may accommodate to anyvariation without departing from the scope of the invention.

While the preferred embodiment is described with air being the coolingmaterial flowing through the container to cool the heat generatingcomponents, it is not to be interpreted as a limitation and othercooling material may be used as fluid material.

Going to FIG. 3, a top view of the rack container of the presentinvention is shown with same reference numbers for same components asused in FIG. 2. Illustrated on FIG. 3 are locations for the airsupplying conduit (210) and the air exhausting conduit (216). In apreferred embodiment, the conduit (210) is located opposite to the airexhausting conduit (216). As exemplified, the air supplying conduit(210) is located at the front side of the rack container to have thearriving cold air naturally flowing through the inside components tocool them. The air exhausting conduit (216) is preferably located at theback side of the rack container to exit hot air.

FIG. 4 is a schematic front view of the air supplying conduit (212) in apreferred embodiment of the present invention. The air supplying conduitcomprises an articulated arrangement (402,404,406) which encapsulates aflexible tube (412). The articulated arrangement comprises a firstsegment (402) linked to a second segment (404) through a firstarticulation (408). The second segment (404) is linked to a thirdsegment (406) through a second articulation (410). The first and thesecond articulations (408,410) are chosen to allow horizontal rotationsas it will be further detailed in FIG. 5. It will be appreciated thatthe size and length of the segments may vary depending on severalfactors such as the size of the machine room, the size of the rackscontainer and so without departing from the scope of the presentinvention. The articulated conduit allows to encapsulate a portion ofthe flexible tube (412) in which the arriving cooling air flows. Theflexible tube is secured to the rack container (200) at an air supplyingport (414).

Going to FIG. 5 a schematic top view of the air supplying conduit in apreferred embodiment of the present invention is presented.

As already mentioned, the air conduit is cover in part with anarticulated arm to allow easy moving of the racks container. The dotedcircles shown on FIG. 5 exemplify tie rotations of the articulations(408, 410) thereby allowing the flexible tube to keep smooth contactduring the rack container displacement.

It is to be appreciated that while the air supplying conduit has beenshown and described herein, the same structure may apply to the airexhausting conduit. The two conduits may be either strictly identicalconduits in size, form and material or may have respectively anyvariation in one or more of those parameters.

FIG. 6 is a schematic perspective view of a datacenter in accordancewith a preferred embodiment of the present invention. For simplicityonly four racks containers (A, B, C, D) are shown but this is not to beinterpreted as a limitation of the layout of datacenters implementingthe racks containers of the present invention. Grey arrows illustratethe cool arriving air flows (602) while blank arrows illustrate the hotexit air flows (604) collected within each individual racks container.For clarity of the figure, the flexible tubes and the air conduits areomitted on each racks container. The benefit of the present inventionbecomes apparent as allowing pushing each racks container closetogether, side by side. Instead of loosing free space as with previouslayouts, mainly space lost for the hot aisles and the cold aisles, thereremains only the need to keep free the place for the displacement of onerack container. The density of datacenters using the structure of rackscontainers of the present invention is much higher than with commonsmachine rooms design.

FIG. 7 is a schematic perspective view of a datacenter in accordancewith a preferred embodiment of the racks containers of the presentinvention in a maintenance mode. In any case of failure or alertdetected on one rack inside a racks container (A, B, C, D) that requiresa maintenance operation is easy to handled with the present structure asillustrated by the operator accessing a failed rack in container C. Inthe proposed example, container D is moved along the rails (208) to freespace between containers C and D thereby getting access to therespective failed rack in container C. The operator then opens the rackdoor (220) and gains access to the inside equipments (204). In alternateembodiments, additional grips may be secured to the container tofacilitate the container movement.

It has to be appreciated that while the invention has been particularlyshown and described with reference to a preferred embodiment, manyvarious changes in form and detail may be made therein without departingfrom the spirit, and scope of the invention.

1-9. (canceled)
 10. A system, said system comprising: a plurality ofrack containers, each rack container comprising a plurality of rackunits, said rack units stacked in a first direction that is parallel toa floor, each rack unit comprising at least one heat generating device,each heat generating device configured to generate heat while inoperation, each rack container being equipped with wheels positioned ona supporting structure to enable the wheels to move along the supportingstructure in a second direction which enables adjacent rack containersof the plurality of rack containers to move closer to or further fromeach other, said second direction being parallel to the floor andperpendicular to the first direction, said supporting structure being onthe floor and oriented in the second direction; and a cooling conduitsecured at a first port on a top surface of each rack container to allowa cooling fluid to flow into said each rack container via the coolingconduit, said top surface being further from the floor than is any othersurface of said each rack container, said cooling fluid configured to beheated by absorbing heat from the at least one heat generating device.11. The system of claim 10, further comprising: an exhaust conduitsecured at a second port on the top surface of each rack container toallow the heated cooling fluid to be exhausted from said each rackcontainer via the heating conduit.
 12. The system of claim 11, whereinthe cooling conduit and the exhaust conduit of each rack container areeach configured to flexibly extend in response to said each rackcontainer moving along the supporting structure in the second direction.13. The system of claim 10, wherein the cooling conduit at each rackcontainer encapsulates a flexible tube and comprises a first segment, asecond segment, and a third segment, wherein the first segment is linkedto the second segment through a first articulation, wherein the secondsegment is linked to the third segment through a third articulation, andwherein the first and second articulations are configured to rotatehorizontally in a plane parallel to the floor to enable the flexibletube to maintain smooth contact with the top surface of said each rackcontainer.
 14. The system of claim 10, further comprising: a flexiblepower and network cable coupled to each rack container, said cableconfigured to supply power to the at least one heat generating device.15. The system of claim 10, wherein the supporting structure on thefloor comprises rails on the floor.
 16. The system of claim 10, whereinthe cooling fluid is air.
 17. The system of claim 10, wherein thecooling fluid is not air.
 18. The system of claim 10, wherein each rackunit comprises a door to enable access to the at least one heatgenerating device is said each rack unit.
 19. The system of claim 10,further comprising the supporting structure.
 20. A method for forming asystem, said method comprising: providing a plurality of rackcontainers, each rack container comprising a plurality of rack units,said rack units stacked in a first direction that is parallel to afloor, each rack unit comprising at least one heat generating device,each heat generating device configured to generate heat while inoperation, each rack container being equipped with wheels; positioningthe wheels on a supporting structure to enable the wheels to move alongthe supporting structure in a second direction which enables adjacentrack containers of the plurality of rack containers to move closer to orfurther from each other, said second direction being parallel to thefloor and perpendicular to the first direction, said supportingstructure being on the floor and oriented in the second direction; andsecuring a cooling conduit at a first port on a top surface of each rackcontainer to allow a cooling fluid to flow into said each rack containervia the cooling conduit, said top surface being further from the floorthan is any other surface of said each rack container, said coolingfluid configured to be heated by absorbing heat from the at least oneheat generating device.
 21. The method of claim 20, further comprising:securing an exhaust conduit at a second port on the top surface of eachrack container to allow the heated cooling fluid to be exhausted fromsaid each rack container via the heating conduit.
 22. The method ofclaim 21, wherein the cooling conduit and the exhaust conduit of eachrack container are each configured to flexibly extend in response tosaid each rack container moving along the supporting structure in thefirst direction.
 23. The method of claim 20, wherein the cooling conduitat each rack container encapsulates a flexible tube and comprises afirst segment, a second segment, and a third segment, wherein the firstsegment is linked to the second segment through a first articulation,wherein the second segment is linked to the third segment through athird articulation, and wherein the first and second articulations areconfigured to rotate horizontally in a plane parallel to the floor toenable the flexible tube to maintain smooth contact with the top surfaceof said each rack container.
 24. The method of claim 20, furthercomprising: coupling a flexible power and network cable to each rackcontainer, said cable configured to supply power to the at least oneheat generating device.
 25. The method of claim 20, wherein thesupporting structure on the floor comprises rails on the floor.
 26. Themethod of claim 20, wherein the cooling fluid is air.
 27. The method ofclaim 20, wherein the cooling fluid is not air.
 28. The method of claim20, wherein each rack unit comprises a door to enable access to the atleast one heat generating device is said each rack unit.
 29. The methodof claim 20, further comprising providing the supporting structure.